In an important victory for the first sale doctrine, a federal district court today ruled that selling "promo CDs" on eBay does not infringe copyright. The court threw out a lawsuit by Universal Music Group (UMG), which had argued that the "promotional use only" labels affixed to these CDs somehow conveyed eternal ownership on UMG, making it illegal to resell the CDs (or even throw them away).

Yesterday the New York Times published an article, "Return to Old Spy Rules Is Seen as Deadline Nears," which allowed various Administration official to push their talking points supporting expanding their warrantless wiretapping powers. The main focus of the talking points is to suggest that Congress faces a deadline in August 2008 due to the expiration of the Protect America Act, and must pass surveillance legislation before that deadline.

The talking points have been effective: "Even some Democrats, at odds with the White House for months over the surveillance issue, said they were worried about the summer situation." Yet, contrary to the government’s fear mongering, America will have tremendous tools available to monitor terrorist threats in August 2008 and beyond.

Congressional Republicans have new legislation they're pushing as a "compromise" on telecom immunity. One of their central talking points has been that the bill would allow a court to review whether the telcos acted legally when they cooperated with the NSA's warrantless wiretapping program. For instance, this morning's New York Times reported:

The Republicans have yielded somewhat on immunity for the companies: The current proposal from Mr. Bond would allow the FISA court to review the administration’s requests and determine by a “preponderance of the evidence” whether the requests were valid.

Here's a game you can play when reading or watching news about the President's warrantless wiretapping program. There are a few mistakes that the media keeps repeating over and over and over — see if you can spot them.

">Friday night's exchange on PBS News Hour between host Judy Woodruff and New York Times columnist David Brooks is typical:

Thanks to Senators Dodd and Feingold for sending a great letter today to House and Senate leadership decrying the telco immunity "compromise" being offered by Republican negotiators:

As we understand it, the [Republican] proposal would authorize secret proceedings in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance to evaluate the companies' immunity claims, but the court's role would be limited to evaluating precisely the same question laid out in the Senate bill: whether a company received "a written request or directive from the Attorney General or the head of an element of the intelligence community... indicating that the activity was authorized by the President and determined to be lawful." Information declassified in the committee report of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on the FISA Amendments Act, S. 2248, confirms that the companies received exactly these materials....

The Supreme Court today issued a unanimous opinion in Quanta v. LG Electronics, its first ruling in 66 years addressing the patent exhaustion doctrine. Patent exhaustion is the patent law equivalent to copyright law's first sale doctrine -- once you buy a product, you own it and the patent owner generally can't interfere with your subsequent use. EFF filed an amicus brief on behalf of itself, Consumers Union, and Public Knowledge in the case.